More Gen-X grump: Sandra Tsing Loh

First, you have to read this.

You will probably have to pause, breathless, a few times. The leaps are large in this piece, especially when she tries to explain the epiphanies she had about mothering when her SIL became vegetative and the time she spent creative narrative for her SIL’s kids. And a lot of details and the willingness to lay bare go pretty deep, on one level.

But on another level I’m experiencing generational rage all over again. It’s the looking to 70s feminism that does it. Hey, I’m all for feminism. I reap the fruits of its labour despite writing about beauty and fashion and I like being educated and I watch Mad Men in wonder at the whole secretarial pool.

And yet – I remember those days, from the fog of childhood, and I remember how everyone’s (except my parents’, maybe) marriages were falling apart and how someone’s mother was always “on strike” and there would be ashtrays lying near a shattered something – mirror, vase – with the shards still there in the carpet because picking up the pieces would be supporting the patriarchy. (And no, I don’t understand why the men didn’t pick them up.) I remember how several of us kids on the block got into fairly serious trouble setting alcohol – alcohol! – on fire in the basement while (I’m not even kidding) my friend’s mother and her friends looked at their vaginas in mirrors.

Yes, the women who changed their destinies did a great thing and it was hard and scary. But when it came to their kids, it sucked. It was not fun making pancakes with Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer. Remember the scene where the kid is playing with his airplane and he spills the drink all over Dustin Hoffman’s work and there’s tons of crying and stress? It was like that, a lot. It. sucked.

Ass.

And when I read about Tsing Loh’s kids sitting in her car because she isn’t working her ass off to put a deposit on, yes, a crummy apartment where they can, say, store some toys and a toothbrush… it drives me nuts.

Look, I have incredible sympathy for the woman. I really do. It sounds like she burned out for good reasons (5 kids? hospital visits?) and I have a secret soft spot for people who long for more passion or whatever, I really do.

But – grow up. To her husband too. Find the cash between you both to get some kind of housing arrangement that actually works. Stop kidding yourself that the kids are fine. And for fuck’s sake stop reading Germaine Greer or whatever.

Look, I’m not saying we all have to be helicopter parents, but can we please, please, please stop pretending that following our bliss is inherently good for our kids? It’s not that I don’t think we should do some of that — hell, I work, and although it’s for money too it’s also for joy. But there are little, trapped people to consider. Carefully. Not drive around in a Volvo deciding it’s okay because they like to read.

I liked to read too. I looked very content. The sad thing was that a lot of the reading was compulsive because my life sucked. A love of books is not the same as security and family love.

So yes – I have to agree there is something to the Bad Mother title here.